1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic mail systems, and more specifically, to a method and system for generating an additional e-mail transmission to one or more recipients who are copied on an original electronic message.
2. Background of the Invention
Present-day network systems communicate through a variety of channels in order to interconnect computers. Electronic mail is in widespread use as a mechanism for communicating messages and for transferring documents, images, sound files and other media files.
E-mail programs and other programs such as Internet browsers having e-mail capability permit a computer user to create a message that is sent to an e-mail server for the recipient of the message. Typical e-mail programs provide a variety of features for sending an e-mail message. Often, a computer user generating an e-mail message copies the e-mail message to others using the carbon-copy (cc:) or blind-carbon-copy (bcc:) feature available in typical e-mail programs. The cc: recipients receive a copy of the e-mail and their address is visible to the other recipients. The bcc: recipients are not visible to the other recipients, making the copy a private message. The e-mail message is merely a copy of the message send to one or more designated recipients (the “to:” recipients) and does not contain any information other than the original e-mail content. In some cases the copied recipient may not understand the reason why they were copied or the meaning of the message content, therefore additional commentary or explanation is desirable. In particular, with bcc: recipients, the recipient may think that the copied message is not intended for them, as their address does not typically appear in the message header. Also, the current copying features in e-mail programs, while making it simple to copy additional recipients, fail to remind the user that commentary, explanation or clarification may be desired or that additional information that the sender intends to provide to one or more copied recipients has not yet been communicated.
Explanations and commentary are often desirable associated with copied e-mail messages, but presently the only way to accomplish this is to send an additional message to the copied recipients using the standard mechanism for generating new messages or forwarding a copy of a previously sent mail (typically in alternative to using a cc: or bcc: feature) to one or more other recipients. However, the methods described above are inconvenient, requiring in the case of a new message entering the copied recipients' address and subject line and requiring pasting the original message content if needed for commentary and reattaching attachments. In the case of a forwarded “sent” message, the subject line will typically contain a “FW:” indicator which may cause the recipient to think that the message has a low priority, and if the forwarding mechanism is not for “quoted” text by default, the sender will not be able to intersperse comments, but may only add a message above the forwarded content.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for generating an e-mail transmission to copied recipients for providing additional information for clarification, explanation or commentary.